Author Archives: Anton

hope you don’t mind if I sit this one out

Looks like I’m staying home alone until a vaccine comes; it’s what I mostly do anyway, though I miss the weekly card games. As a libertarian, I do not presume to know what’s best for others. So, lucky me, I … Continue reading

Posted in medicine, politics | Leave a comment

early webcomics gallery

Joe Average’s first anniversary strip features characters from 37 other strips. Can you help me name them? Some have fallen off the Web. Nukees S.S.D.D Look What I Brought Home (?) Superosity Road Waffles ? Life at Bayside (?) Bobbins … Continue reading

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Scribbles: The Ensmoothening, Part III

Many of the curves in this chart have some unsightly wiggles. That’s because, when a function of degree 2 or higher tries to approximate a piecewise constant, it tends to go back and forth across the target. So here instead … Continue reading

Posted in curve-fitting | 1 Comment

supply issues

I’ve had a number of mugs printed by Zazzle, and most of them came out gorgeous; but last summer I was peeved enough by a delivery cock-up to want to take my business elsewhere. Recently I got around to doing … Continue reading

Posted in merch | 1 Comment

pull the other one

This week I’ve had a flood of mail with titles like VIDEO OF YOU! and YOU GOT RECORDED!. A tweetmate asked me to save and share one, so here it is.

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a sense of place?

I read Jack Vance’s memoir, of which many pages say “We went to Ireland / Tahiti / Kashmir . . . found a pleasant cottage and stayed there for a couple of months, cranking out stories.” It would be pleasant to know … Continue reading

Posted in prose | Leave a comment

it’s in the literature

On a truncated icosahedron / buckyball / Telstar-style soccer ball, consider two adjacent hexagons and the two pentagons that are adjacent to both. These four faces can be removed, rotated by a right angle, and reattached, causing only a small … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics | 2 Comments